Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation

[MacRumors]

The latest iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air models are equipped with Apple's all-new N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread connectivity. However, the chip has a Wi-Fi 7 bandwidth limitation.

According to FCC documents reviewed by MacRumors, the N1 chip in all of the new iPhone models supports up to 160 MHz channel bandwidth for Wi-Fi 7, short of the standard's 320 MHz maximum. This limitation means the devices cannot achieve the peak theoretical speeds possible with Wi-Fi 7, but real-world performance is typically already bottlenecked by internet service providers and other factors.

For the vast majority of customers, this is a non-issue, but some iPhone users had wanted to know if the N1 chip offered 160 MHz or 320 MHz channel bandwidth for Wi-Fi 7, so we combed through FCC documents to find the answer.

FCC document showing Wi-Fi specs for iPhone 17 Pro Max​

Wi-Fi 7 is still very fast. The standard allows for data transmission over the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and/or 6GHz bands simultaneously, with a compatible router, resulting in faster speeds, lower latency, and more reliable connectivity.

All of the iPhone 16 models — excluding the iPhone 16e — also support Wi-Fi 7 with up to 160 MHz channel bandwidth. Those devices are equipped with a Broadcom chip for wireless networking, though, leading to hopes that Apple's N1 chip might raise the limit to 320 MHz. Evidently, that is not the case.

There are other benefits, though. Apple said the N1 chip improves the overall performance and reliability of features like Personal Hotspot and AirDrop, and it also contributes to power efficiency improvements in the latest iPhone models.

Article Link: Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation

 

[scrapesleon]

got to limit it so they have features for the iPhone 18

 

[sniffies]

But is Wi-Fi 7 on iPhone 17 Pro Max faster than Wi-Fi 7 on iPhone 16 Pro Max? Is it at least comparable?

That's what I wanna know.

 

[jz0309]

I understand that some people already have wifi 7 routers, and those who are buying new routers certainly should, but the vast majority of people have non-7 capable routers so this is not a big deal, I have a 6e router and it serves my needs just fine. YMMV

 

[Lobwedgephil]

But is Wi-Fi 7 160 MHz faster than Wi-Fi 6?

That's what I wanna know.

Yes

 

[ls1dreams]

Apple is always super annoying with this, but for a phone I don't really care too much. Mostly care to see what macbooks do with wi-fi 7 to maximize bandwidth.

 

[npmacuser5]

The average user keeps their iPhone 3 years maybe. Build for today with fudge for tomorrow. No issues with this Apple development.

 

[herocero]

How many people are running any WiFi network with a whole chunk of 320MHz? I’ll wait …
And that’s before other network bottlenecks.

WiFi 7 is about efficiency, security (WPA3) and the benefits of multiple frequencies at the same time.

 

[bollman]

I'm having problem with keeping 40MHz bandwidth clean, and I live in the countryside (although I have 6 APs due to large house and garden) If you live in a city with loads of Wifi-networks near, the possibilty of keeping the full 320MHz bandwidth "clean" to be able to use it yourself is not going to happen...

 

[WilliApple]

I can just see android users right now using this as an excuse to use android because iPhones now have 120hz

 

[Broken Hope]

Disappointing, would be interested if it supports MLO properly to combine speeds, 16 series doesn’t.

 

[tennisproha]

The Broadcom chips are also limited to 160 MHz so this is a non-issue. Of course that's not gonna stop people from complaining about Apple.

 

[FaustsHausUK]

It would be great if Apple's chip supported the very latest and greatest, but when the iPhone 16 range's Broadcom chip did not - and it is very to easy to argue Broadcom have a _lot_ more experience with these wireless connectivity - it's strange to frame it like a regression. Especially as very few people are even going to experience the speed benefits of what this chip _can_ do with the average home and office wireless setups.

 

[macduke]

But is Wi-Fi 7 160 MHz faster than Wi-Fi 6?

That's what I wanna know.

I ran all this nonsense through ChatGPT 5 Thinking model and it said 6E theoretical is around 2.4Gbps and runs the same 160Mhz channel width. It said with improvements in 7 like 4K-QAM will give this a bump to around 2.9Gbps vs 5.8Gbps in full 7, so yeah sounds like half the throughput, but still better than 6E, and you get other benefits from 7 like “MLO (multi-link operation), better OFDMA, and more flexible spectrum usage. These reduce lag and improve consistency under load, which Wi-Fi 6E can’t match.”

Sounds about right to me, but I don’t keep up as much with networking crap. Basically it’s about 20% faster, and still faster than most ISPs.

 

[name99]

How many people are running any WiFi network with a whole chunk of 320MHz? I’ll wait …
And that’s before other network bottlenecks.

WiFi 7 is about efficiency, security (WPA3) and the benefits of multiple frequencies at the same time.

It's only relevant if you have a 6GHz base station. So you need at least a 6e base station.

I suspect it's like the DFS (radar channels) support. Plenty of people will complain about it and demand they have it, then, when they actually try it, realize it's not worth the downsides...

(DFS will, I expect, turn out like 320MHz channels in another way. After a few years, best practices stabilize and it becomes generally usable. But by that stage the complainers and whiners have moved onto demanding another leading edge and currently impractical feature.)

 

[Serge88]

It remains to me when Apple streamed movies at 720p and said we don't really need 1080p, 720p is enough for the fanboys.

 

[PJWilkin]

Channel width is great, if you live in the middle of a field

In an urban area, it can be the death of your wireless
Even 160Mhz width can overlap most usable channels in 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz
And for performance you are often better limiting to 20/40

The only real benefit is the 6GHz band at present, until that becomes congested

 

[zach-coleman]

The people here reporting unstable performance in rural are confusing to me. What router do you have? I have the Nest Pro (6E) in a medium density area (live in an apartment building) and I can still easily pull ~950Mbps. I don’t do local transfers so I’m not sure what the true wireless cap would be though, because the nest pro is hardware capped to 1 gigabit.

 

[BeyondtheTech]

got to limit it so they have features for the iPhone 18

I can already imagine the graphic slide at next year’s iPhone 18 keynote…

“2x the Wi-Fi performance of the iPhone 17”

 

[t0rqx]

I said this in another thread, this is for N1X.

Also I told Apple to put this in the iPhone BETA Air instead. Glad I cancelled my preorder.

 

[MayaUser]

Also i told Apple to put this in the iPhone Fold beta
Better this limitation but an more consistent connection...this is huge even for Airdrop

 

[Chancha]

But is Wi-Fi 7 160 MHz faster than Wi-Fi 6?

That's what I wanna know.

I had tested this with iPhone 15 Pro Max WiFi 6E vs iPhone 16 Pro Max WiFi 7, against a UniFi U7-Pro-XGS AP.
Best case scenario peak throughput results were only like 10% faster on the 16, like 1400Mbps vs 1600Mbps.

 

[breather]

Just how fast does Wi-Fi need to be on a phone?
I’ll bet most of us couldn’t tell the difference between a Wi-Fi 6 and a Wi-Fi 7 enabled phone.

 

[tommyleeh]

But is Wi-Fi 7 160 MHz faster than Wi-Fi 6?

That's what I wanna know.

I recently got one of the new Bell Canada Wifi 7 Gigahub 2.0. Compared to the 6e previous version I find things about 20% faster? At least on speed test benchmarks. I have 3gig internet and I top out at about 1400mbps download on an iPhone 16pro. Real world usage, no noticeable difference lol.

The bigger benefit, and it’s probably just because it’s a new router with better firmware, but the signal is a lot more stable. I actually disabled 6e prior to this because the connection was so unstable.

 

[jameswilby]

Whilst I agree for the vast majority this is not really relevant... here is a fun tin foil hat theory. The 16 Pros had the required hardware for 320MHz (I believe?) but was not enabled in software. Maybe that was due to the fact they already knew the targeted specs for the N1 chip and so capped the 16 Pro to those. Then, as others mentioned, when the N2 or N1X arrives... ta-da full bandwidth.

Just for fun but certainly not impossible